Leaving home to live at Indian Residential School was an inevitable event for young Bea Silver, a Sto: lo girl in Sumas. Attendance was compulsory for native children like her and her many older siblings who had already been attending since before she was born. They never talked about the school, but her brothers prepared her for it when they taught her boxing! Bea tells what it was like. Her memoir begins before school: a childhood in a small Indian Reserve, first surrounding the reader with her loving family. Many children in Beatrice's generation were taken from home too young to be able to later recall that safety and certainty. This story allows the reader to walk in the little shoes of a girl who survived the infamous school. She did so by sheer force of will, generated by confidence in the love of her family and the strength of her seven-year-old identity.
Leaving home to live at Indian Residential School was an inevitable event for young Bea Silver, a Sto: lo girl in Sumas. Attendance was compulsory for native children like her and her many older siblings who had already been attending since before she was born. They never talked about the school, but her brothers prepared her for it when they taught her boxing! Bea tells what it was like. Her memoir begins before school: a childhood in a small Indian Reserve, first surrounding the reader with her loving family. Many children in Beatrice's generation were taken from home too young to be able to later recall that safety and certainty. This story allows the reader to walk in the little shoes of a girl who survived the infamous school. She did so by sheer force of will, generated by confidence in the love of her family and the strength of her seven-year-old identity.
